UC, CSU six-figure pay list grows over 4 years

Recent raises

UC: In July, UC granted a 3 percent pay increase to employees not represented by labor unions – a group that includes most UC faculty. The most senior-level administrators were excluded. UC said at the time that the raises would help offset employees' higher health care and retirement costs.

CSU: In late August, CSU and its faculty union reached a deal to provide a 1.34 percent pay increase retroactive to July 1. But negotiations were ongoing in areas including how much employees will pay for health care.

Supplemental pay at CSU

San Diego State head football coach Rocky Long earned $214,496 last year, according to the CSU system's pay database. But he earned $640,000 more from a nonprofit campus foundation that is contractually obligated to supplement his salary, taking his 2012 gross above $850,000, according to San Diego State pay records.

Long’s 2012 compensation is a dramatic example of how the total pay of a CSU employee is not always reflected in the system’s central salary database.

Among the CSU executives who received supplemental income in 2011-12 from auxiliary foundations were:

Elliot Hirshman, San Diego State president, $50,000

Jeffrey Armstrong, San Luis Obispo president, $30,000

Charles B. Reed, former CSU system chancellor, $30,000

UC does not allow its nonprofit campus foundations to supplement employees’ salaries.

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The ranks of University of California and California State University employees earning six-figure paychecks has swelled nearly 25 percent over the past four years, a period that saw tuition skyrocket and state funding dramatically cut, according to an analysis of the systems' pay data.

The bulk of employees earning at least $100,000 a year worked for the 10-campus UC system, which with its expansive research and medical center operations employs about 31/2 times the number of employees as the CSU system. The UC system, meanwhile, serves about a third fewer students than CSU.

Between 2009 and 2012, UC added 6,125 employees to its payroll who earned six figures, for a total of 28,744 last year.

During the same period, Cal State added 153 employees earning $100,000 or more, for a total of 3,131 last year.

Combined, the systems boosted their six-figure earners by 24.5 percent over the past four years.

MARKET SHAPES PAY

The state's two public university systems have long defended their compensation levels as necessary to attract and retain the best and brightest.

UC, in particular, “competes in many different labor markets,” including health care, coaching and investment management, and “must follow market practices as closely as possible,” UC explained in releasing its 2012 payroll data.

Many UC employees' salaries are fully paid through the system's myriad revenue-generating enterprises, including UC's medical centers, and some return proceeds to student-centered instruction.

Also, both systems say they must compete for the best-qualified faculty and administrators from across the nation.

UC looks to other elite U.S. research universities to set its salary scales, while CSU aligns its pay with that of similar U.S. state universities.

The past four years have been financially tumultuous for the state's public university systems.

In 2009, UC and CSU implemented mandatory furlough days for faculty and staff that translated to 4 to 10 percent pay cuts in response to sharp state funding losses.

A year later, UC raised tuition 32 percent, and CSU followed suit in 2011, with a 23 percent tuition hike.

UC and CSU were dealt their biggest funding blows in 2011, when the state cut the systems' budgets by $650 million each, equivalent to about a quarter of all state funds received by each system.

UC tuition shot up an additional 18.3 percent in 2011.

In early 2012, CSU trustees imposed a cap on executive compensation, limiting pay of newly hired presidents to no more than 10 percent above their predecessor's. Also, no more than $325,000 in public funds may be used annually to pay a CSU president's salary.

“I think the trustees have a new significant awareness of physical reality,” said CSU trustee Douglas Faigin, who was appointed to his seat in December by Gov. Jerry Brown. “Market rates are moving targets all the time. There's got to be some restraint to live within our means.”

TOP EARNERS

In the UC system, most of the top-paid employees are world-renowned doctors, biomedical researchers and athletic coaches. The dozens of people who fall into this category earn close to or more than $1 million annually.

UC's campus chancellors fall into a tier well below the system's highest-compensated employees, with gross pay last year ranging from $318,915 for UC Santa Cruz's chancellor to $458,916 for UC San Francisco's chancellor.

In the CSU system, the top-paid employees are primarily the campus presidents and senior administrators. Campus presidents' gross pay last year ranged from $307,048 for Cal Poly Pomona's president to $391,575 for Cal State L.A.'s president.

Campus heads who didn't work in their role for all of 2012 are excluded from the ranges.

“There is a big mission difference between the two systems,” said John Douglass, a senior research fellow for UC Berkeley's Center for Studies in Higher Education. “It's more expensive to have a research-intensive university. CSU is a more intensive teaching institution.”

While the pay of campus heads generally dwarfs that of other senior administrators, Douglass said officials don't use the compensation of campus heads to dictate or necessarily set the tone for what those who serve under them will earn.

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